No. 18-956 In the Supreme Court of the United States ________________ GOOGLE LLC, Petitioner, v. ORACLE AMERICA, INC., Respondent. ________________ On Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ________________ BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE SOFTWARE INNOVATORS, STARTUPS, AND INVESTORS IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONER ________________ J. Carl Cecere Counsel of Record CECERE PC 6035 McCommas Blvd. Dallas, TX 75206 (469) 600-9455 [email protected] Counsel for Amici Curiae January 13, 2020 TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of contents .................................................................. I Table of authorities ............................................................. II Interest of amici curiae ....................................................... 1 Introduction and summary of argument .......................... 3 Argument ............................................................................. 6 Rejecting the Federal Circuit’s erroneous under- standing of the copyrightability of Java’s software interface is essential to protect startups. ........................................................................ 6 A. Startups depend on easy access to software interfaces like Java’s. .......................................... 7 B. The Federal Circuit’s rulings threaten the easy access to connectivity that startups need to survive. .................................................. 11 C. Without easy access to software interfaces like Java’s, startups will be harder to develop, and harder to fund, sending ripples through the entire economy. ............................. 16 Conclusion .......................................................................... 22 (I) TABLE OF AUTHORITIES Cases: Assessment Techs. of WI, LLC v. WIREdata, Inc., 350 F.3d 640 (7th Cir. 2003) ............................................ 14 Baker v. Selden, 101 U.S. (11 Otto) 99 (1880) ........................................... 13 Bateman v. Mnemonics, Inc., 79 F.3d 1532, 1539 (11th Cir. 1996) ................................................................ 14 Computer Assocs. Int’l, Inc. v. Altai, Inc., 982 F.2d 693 (2d Cir. 1992) ............................................. 14 Lexmark Int’l, Inc. v. Static Control Components, Inc., 387 F.3d 522 (6th Cir. 2004) ............................................ 14 Lotus Dev’t Corp. v. Borland Int’l, Inc., 49 F.3d 807 (1st. Cir. 1995), aff’d, 516 U.S. 233 (1996) (per curiam). ........................................................ 13 Mitel, Inc. v. Iqtel, Inc., 124 F.3d 1366 (10th Cir. 1997) ........................................ 14 Pamela Samuelson & Suzanne Scotchmer, The Law and Economics of Reverse Engineering, 111 Yale L.J. 1575 (2002) ....................... 14 Sega Enterps. Ltd. v. Accolade, Inc., 977 F.2d 1510 (9th Cir. 1992) .......................................... 14 Statutes: Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 1201(f)(1). .................................................... 11 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, Pub. L. No. 105-298, 112 Stat. 2827, § 102(b) (1998). ................................................................................. 1 (II) III Statutes—continued: 17 U.S.C. § 102(a). ............................................................................... 15 102(b) ........................................................................... 9, 10 Other authorities: Kevin Ashton, That ‘Internet of Things’ Thing, RFID Journal (June 22, 2009), <https://bit.ly/2V0SJBJ>. .............................................. 8 Jonathan Band, Interfaces on Trial 2.0 (2011). ............... 9 Michael A. Carrier, Copyright and Innovation: The Untold Story, 2012 Wis. L. Rev. 891 (2012) ......... 20 Adam DuVander, 7,000 APIs: Twice as Many as This Time Last Year, ProgrammableWeb (Aug. 23, 2012), <https://bit.ly/2EkDnRh> ................ 10 Ewing Marion Kauffman Found., The Importance of Startups in Job Creation and Job Destruction 4 (Jul. 2010), <http://bit.ly/1eODvIy>. .............................................. 22 Darian M. Ibrahim, The (Not So) Puzzling Behavior of Angel Investors, 61 Vand. L. Rev. 1405 (2008) ....................................................................... 11 Deborah Gage, The Venture Capital Secret: 3 Out of 4 Start-ups Fail, Wall St. J., Sept. 20, 2012 .................................................................................. 19 Urs Gasser & John Palfrey, Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly Connected Systems (2012) .................................................................. 8 Paul Goldstein, Goldstein on Copyright § 2.3.11 ........... 12 IV Other authorities—continued: Fern Halper, Judith Hurwitz, & Marcia Kaufman, A Web API Study: The Benefits of APIs in the App Economy (2011), <https://bit.ly/2XlcWDv> ............................................. 11 J. Haltiwanger et al., Ewing Marion Kauffman Found., Declining Business Dynamism in the U.S. High-Technology Sector 7 (Feb. 2014), <http://bit.ly/1OWNUPp> ........................................... 22 J.D. Harrison, More businesses are closing than starting. Can Congress help turn that around?, Wash. Post, Sept. 17, 2014, <http://wapo.st/1Parrns>. ............................................ 22 Eric von Hippel, Democratizing Innovation (2006) ................................................................................ 21 Tim Kane, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, The Importance of Startups in Job Creation and Job Destruction 3 (2010), <https://bit.ly/2xxx0GE>. Our startups represent some of the most important dri ..................... 5 Ariel Katz, Copyright and Competition Policy in Handbook of the Digital Creative Economy (Christian Handke and Ruth Towse, eds. 2013) .......... 13 Samuel Kortum & Josh Lerner, Assessing the Contribution of Venture Capital to Innovation, RAND Journal of Economics (2000) ................................................................................ 11 Gary Lauder, Venture Capital: “The Buck Stops Where?”, 2 Med. Innovation & Bus. 14, (2010), <http://bit.ly/2xzoAhi>. ................................................ 20 V Other authorities—continued: Nat’l Sci. Bd., Nat’l Sci. Found., Science and Engineering Indicators, fig. 3-12 (2016), <http://1.usa.gov/1m7gkxG>. ......................................... 22 Nat’l Venture Capital Ass’n, Venture Impact: The Economic Importance of Venture-Backed Companies to the U.S. Economy 9-10 (5th ed. 2009), <http://bit.ly/1X8wBmZ>. ................................ 22 National Venture Capital Association, Yearbook 2017 (2017) <https://bit.ly/2U5bGlP> ......................... 11 Open Source Initiative, The Open Source Definition, http://opensource.org/osd. ........................... 9 Tim O’Reilly, The Open Source Paradigm Shift, in Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software (J. Feller, B. Fitzgerald, S. Hissam, & K. R. Lakhani, eds., 2007)............................................ 9 Small Bus. Admin., Off. of Advocacy, Frequently Asked Questions 1, <http://1.usa.gov/1y1jgOO>......................................... 22 Jeffery Stylos & Brad Myers, Mapping the Space of API Design Decisions, 2007 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human- Centric Computing 53-54 (2007) ................................... 11 World Economic Forum, Technology Pioneers 2018 <https://bit.ly/2yF8wiL> ....................................... 5 Webpages: Apache Software Foundation, Open Office, http://www.openoffice.org/. .............................................. 9 Basecamp (37signals, LLC), http://basecamp.com. ..................................................... 10 VI Webpages—continued: Disqus, http://www.disqus.com ........................................ 10 GitHub, Inc., https://github.com/dewitt/opensearch. ......................... 10 Last.fm LTD, http://www.last.fm ..................................... 10 Microsoft Kinect, <https://bit.ly/2psUKdl>. ................. 10 Mozilla Products, <https://mzl.la/2IASStD> .................. 9 Programmable-Web API Directory, https://www.programmableweb.com/apis/direc tory ................................................................................... 10 Simple Finance Technology Corp., http://www.simple.com ................................................... 10 Wordpress, http://wordpress.org/. ..................................... 9 In the Supreme Court of the United States _______________ No. 18-956 GOOGLE LLC, Petitioner, v. ORACLE AMERICA, INC., Respondent. _______________ On Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit _______________ BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE SOFTWARE INNOVATORS, START-UPS, AND INVESTORS IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONER _______________ 1 INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE Amici include and represent software innovators, startups, and investors actively competing in a wide array of industry sectors and markets. 1 Petitioner has lodged a blanket amicus consent letter with the Court, and Respondent has consented to the filing of this brief. No counsel for any party authored this brief in whole or in part, and no person or entity other than the amici, their members, or their counsel made a monetary contribution intended to fund the brief ’s prepara- tion or submission. (1) 2 Azavea – Azavea is a software design and engineering firm based in Philadelphia with a mission to advance the state of the art in geospatial technology and to apply it for civic, social, and environment impact. Employing 65 peo- ple, Azavea’s work depends on an open innovation ecosys- tem, and we believe that the ability to